Manic Monday: Play

"Butterfly Kisses, a song by Bob Carlisle that climbed the charts in 2000, received international recognition in both the Christian and secular music industries. The song was about the tender love between a father and his daughter, starting from her birth to her wedding day. Mr. Carlisle said, 'I get a lot of mail from young girls who try to get me to marry their moms. That used to be a real chuckle because it's so cute, but then I realized they didn't want romance for mom. They want the father that is in that song, and that just kills me.'

Our modern society has downplayed the importance of fathers over the past 40 years. Television programs such as Leave It to Beaver, Father Knows Best, and Make Room for Daddy portrayed dads as a wellspring of wisdom, compassion, and guidance.

By the end of the sixties, that began to change. In 1971, All in the Family featured Archie Bunker, a bigoted, bungling oppressor. Then came Tim Taylor of Home Improvement with the recurring theme of Tim messing something up and his wife, Jill, straightening it out. I could go on with The Simpsons, Roseanne, and even the Berenstein Bears cartoons. In the nineties, Murphy Brown (played by Candace Bergen) announced to the world that children really didn't need a father at all. Suffice it to say that now fathers on television are more likely to be portrayed as obstacles than as overcomers of obstacles.

In 1995, about 40 percent of American children went to sleep in homes in which their fathers did not live. The 2000 census showed that 84 percent of children in America who live in single-parent families live with their mothers. The feminist movement has tried to teach women that they do not need men - fathers or husbands. In 2000, an article in Time magazine suggested that remaining unmarried can be "incredibly empowering for women," even when the choice involves raising children without the presence of a father. "Who needs men?" some women taunt.

I'll tell you who- children."

-Sharon James, Dreams of a Woman

"Play Well"

I have a geometric thing. Geometry was my worst math subject, but that's not what I mean. I draw things in my mind. Lines across rooms... from corner to corner. I love to make triangles in my mind. The squares created by sidewalks... I make a big X in the middle of them and then I walk inside the triangles my mind creates. I was at a restaurant at closing time and they were mopping the floor. They would stack the chairs on top of the tables, one upside down on top of the other that was right side up. They made a perfect rectangle. It was so pleasing. I love the game Tetris. I love making those lines and trying to fill in all the wholes.

I do have a point to all of this. I think that this geo-thing that I have is the reason I SO love Legos!!! This was not always the case. We got Legos for Mac when he was, I believe, three years old. I didn't think much about them at that time. For Christmas a year or two later, we gave him a Lego creator set. Those are the ones that have something specific you can build. It was a car kit. That one I LOVED. I became obsessed. There were several cars to build and I built them all (for Mac, of course!) and then I started creating my own. Ella wanted all the same cars as Mac got, and there just weren't enough pieces for two of each, so I caved and bought Ella the same set! This was secretly a thrill for me! It doubled my cool car parts! So, we built happily for a while with what we had.

My brothers both had lots of Legos as kids. After they decided they were too grown up for them, my mom put them in her save-it-for-the-grandkids box. Then the grandkids started playing with them and she went crazy. She would find Legos all over the house. She decided that she didn't want them anymore and asked if we did. Yay!!! We now have a HUGE Lego collection! (not as big as Whipples, but big enough!)

Needless to say, my geometric obsession is satiated by building Legos and my kids think that's the greatest! Here are some of our creations! (and Rohan in his knight hood!)



And FYI... from Wikipedia-
The company name Lego was coined by [Ole Kirk] Christiansen from the Danish phrase leg godt, which means "play well". The name could also be interpreted as "I put together" or "I assemble" in Latin, though this would be a somewhat forced application of the general sense "I collect; I gather; I learn"; the word is most used in the derived sense, "I read". The cognate Greek verb "λέγω" or "lego" also means "gather, pick up", but this can include constructing a stone wall.[1]

The Lego Group's motto is "Only the best is good enough", translated from the Danish phrase, Det bedste er ikke for godt. This motto was created by Ole Kirk to encourage his employees never to skimp on quality, a value he believed in strongly. The motto is still used within the company today.